Thus the work of depopulation went on until, in 1622, many encomiendas which originally contained a thousand adult male Indians, and yielded eight thousand dollars of tribute, were reduced to a hundred; yet these unfortunate survivors were forced to continue the payment of the original tribute, or to render personal service instead. There was an encomienda in Huanuco where the Indians had paid more than one hundred thousand dollars over and above what was legally due, during fifty years.[178]
It may well be asked of what use were the humane and beneficent laws enacted by the kings of Spain if this was the way in which they were universally evaded by corregidors, curas, and Spanish settlers of all ranks? The caciques sorrowfully watched the gradual extinction of their people, perhaps secretly hoped for an opportunity of revenge, but were without power to prevent the cruel oppression which they deplored, though they did not neglect, from time to time, to protest against the lawless exactions and cruelties of the Spaniards.[179]
But the Indians did not endure their fate without occasional attempts at resistance. On one occasion the people on the western shore of lake Titicaca rose against the mita of Potosi, and retreated amongst the beds of rushes on the shores of the lake, which, in some places, are nine leagues long and one broad. In the midst of these rushes there was an island, whence secret lanes were cut through the tangled mass, which the fugitives navigated in their balsas. Secure in their retreat, they continued to make inroads on the Spanish towns near the lake, until at last, in 1632, the viceroy Count of Chinchon ordered his nephew, Don Rodrigo de Castro, to chastise them. Five of their leaders were captured and hung at Zepita, and their heads were stuck on the bridge over the Desaguadero. This only exasperated the Indians, who elected a brave and enterprising leader named Pedro Laime, and, suddenly attacking the bridge over the Desaguadero, they carried off the heads of their former chiefs. The Spaniards marched along the shore and waded to some islets, while the Indians hovered round them in their balsas, and prevented them from advancing further. At length the Spanish troops were embarked in twenty balsas, and came in sight of the hostile squadron commanded by Laime. The Indians went in and out of the lanes of rushes only known to themselves, baffled their oppressors, and cut off several of the Spanish balsas. A party of cavalry advancing into the swampy ground was suddenly surrounded and cut to pieces, the Indians only losing three men.[180]
Thus the fugitive Indians retained their liberty for many years in these inaccessible fastnesses of lake Titicaca, and the Augustine friar Calancha confesses that "the rebellion was caused by the injustice and tyranny of the Spaniards, who forced the Indians to work without pay, and seized on their goods."
This was not a solitary instance of rebellion, though, on the whole, the Indians endured their cruel fate with meekness and long suffering. Yet they are not a mean-spirited people, and at length they showed their oppressors that it was possible to press the yoke down too hard even for their powers of endurance.
The tribute, the mita, the exactions of the curas, and the alcabala, or excise duties,[181] were all patiently borne; but another method of extortion, the "repartimiento," or "reparto,"[182] at length exhausted the patience of the over-tasked Indians. The reparto was a system, ostensibly for distributing European goods to the Indians, which was converted into a means of wholesale robbery by the Spanish corregidors, and finally led to a general rebellion. An Indian chieftain thus describes the reparto system:—"Abandoning their souls for their avarice, the corregidors have the assurance to distribute (repartir) by force, and against all reason, baize and cloths worth two rials for one dollar, and in the same proportion with knives, needles, dice, pins, cards, trumpets, rings, and pewter mirrors, which are all quite useless to the Indians; besides velvets and silks, which the poor people cannot use; for they are obliged to dress in the coarsest clothes, to sleep on beds of rags, and feed on roots; while the corregidors and their dependants commit the most unjust extortions and outrages. They even exceed the legal quantity of repartos assigned to their respective provinces; for example, that of Tinta was ordered to be 112,500 dollars, and the corregidor made it 500,000 dollars, as was proved by his books and papers."[183] General del Valle, who commanded the troops employed to put down Tupac Amaru's rebellion, complained that the avarice of the corregidors, in recovering their claims on the Indians for repartos, was such that they refused him the aid of their people in pacifying the country. Their obstinacy and avarice, he declared, had reached to such a point that, if they were informed that the rebels had reached the very suburbs of their towns, they would rather see the defeat of the king's troops than send away a single Indian who might owe them a yard of cloth.[184]
This unblushing dishonesty and extortion, which was winked at by the Royal Audience at Lima, the highest court of judicial appeal, drove the Indian population to a state of desperation, which only required a spark to set it in a blaze. The humane laws, and the elaborate system of legislation for the Indians, had, after 200 years of hopeless inefficiency, ended in this. The careful enactments to limit the amount of tribute, to prevent the Indians from suffering by forced personal service, the laws of ecclesiastical councils to protect them from the exactions of the curas, the benevolent intentions evinced in declaring all Indians to be minors in the eye of the law, the "residencias," or arrangements for examining the conduct of every official at the close of his term of office; all these provisions, which have justly called forth the praise of Mr. Helps, Mr. Merivale,[185] and other modern writers, had become dead letters, absolutely and hopelessly, towards the end of the last century. The laws remained the same, but they were habitually set aside by those whose duty it was to administer them. The tribute fixed for villages when they contained a thousand men was continued the same when the population had decreased to a hundred;[186] the mita was enforced so mercilessly that whole districts were left without a single adult male inhabitant;[187] the curas extorted exorbitant fees from their victims, in spite of the law;[188] and the judges, who were sent to take the "residencias," received bribes to overlook all offences, and usually handed over the complaints which were submitted to them to the officials who were complained of in exchange for a sum of money, the price of their silence.[189] These evils were long borne patiently; but when the shameless enormities of the Repartos were superadded, the poor remnant of the descendants of the subjects of the Incas at length rose as one man against their oppressors.
There were not wanting, amongst the Spaniards in Peru, as well as amongst the native Caciques, many good and humane men who raised their voices against the lawless cruelty of the majority of the officials, and earnestly warned the Government of the inevitable consequences. Don Ventura Santalices, the Governor of La Paz, devoted his time and fortune to the cause of the oppressed Indians, and was appointed to a seat in the Council of the Indies, but he was poisoned on his arrival in Spain: the energetic remonstrances of Blas Tupac Amaru, a descendant of the Incas, caused him also to be summoned to Spain, where he obtained promises of many concessions, but he was assassinated at sea, during the return voyage: and the names of other bold and fearless defenders of the Indians deserve to be recorded, such as Don Manuel Arroyo, Don Ignacio Castro, Don Agustin de Gurruchategui, Bishop of Cuzco, and Don Francisco Campos, Bishop of La Paz.
But their remonstrances bore no fruit, and, in 1780, the Corregidor of Chayanta having exacted three repartos in one year, an Indian chief, named Tomas Catari, set the example of revolt; thousands flocked to his standard, and to those of his brothers Damaso and Nicolas; in a few months the whole of Upper Peru (the modern Bolivia) was in revolt, and an army of Indians under Julian Apasa, a baker of Hayohayo near Sicasica, besieged La Paz.[190] At the same time there was an uneasy feeling at Cuzco and throughout Peru, and whispers of a conspiracy amongst the Indians. Don Pedro Sahuaraura, the Cacique of Oropesa, near Cuzco, reported that one Ildefonso del Castillo had solicited him to join the conspiracy; suspicion was thrown on several other influential Indians; and in June 1780 this Castillo, Bernardo Tambohuacto, the Cacique of Pissac, and six others, were put to death at Cuzco.[191] In the following November the Cacique José Gabriel Condorcanqui, better known as Tupac Amaru, raised the standard of revolt, and the last desperate struggle for liberty was commenced by the descendant of the Incas.[192]